The main purpose with this master's thesis was to develop a survey with the intention to examine what expectations the JM AB:s customer had on a future garden and also to discuss if the lawn has a symbolic meaning in gardens. The lion's share of the thesis is based on a survey, aimed at people in the company's customer database. The intention was to examine what expectations they had on their future garden and if their expectations were met when they later bought a house from the company. The work also consists of interviews and visits to areas with newly built homes. I interpreted the result from my surveys as the lawn on its own being is a strong symbol for a garden and also signals a social status of the owner. To the company the pre made lawn on a role is a way of saving time and easily achieve what the customer request. The company wants to create a concept of a "preset-garden" that meets the company's vision as well as the expectations of the customer.

The aim of this study has been to make clear the conception of ?The Garden City?, and also to investigate why and how the garden city has come to be a more frequent and attractive form of settlement in our Swedish community. The essay is supported by a literature study about the garden city from its beginning (1890?s) to present time. To make a distinct explanation of the garden cities progress over time, I have studied the idea behind two garden cities of today, Tullinge and Vistabergs garden city.

Discussions about the sustainable city are now all over the world and many believe that the solutions are merely technical. But what gives the city its character is what is happening in the public places. It is these spaces that bring the people together. Design is the key to sustainable urban spaces. We must produce public places that reflect our society.

This thesis puts together general guidelines for the design of outdoor environment at nursing homes for people with dementia. The goal is to give the residents a greater quality of life with the garden.The garden must be safe and secure while offering places for fellowship or retirement and experiences of joy and competence. The plant material and other elements in the garden are inserted to stimulate the senses and to inspire to different activities. The paper describes the health promoting effects of nature and gardens by referring to scientific studies. These studies encompass the impact of nature on all human beings as well as how the outdoor environment affects our target group, elderly people with dementia. An essential part of the work focus on the conditions in a garden for people with dementia, on the contact between residence and garden and the access to surrounding life. Eventually, the general guidelines are applied to a real building project ? the Vega project in Lomma,a new nursing home for persons with dementia.

The purpose has been to, by the means of literature studies and conversation, give landscape architects, teachers or other interested people an increased understanding of school gardens as a phenomenon. One episode in the essay describes school garden?s historical background and how its ideology has changed as the society has developed. A conversation with a spokesperson for Södermalmsskolan in Stockholm, depict how a communal public school handles the management of a school garden today. I have also wanted to present the conditions that society and the schools organisation has put on the management of the garden on this particular school. In the year of 2007 Södermalmsskolan got the opportunity to found its school garden thanks to the environmental campaigns that were realized by the city of Stockholm.

This master project in landscape architecture is named Interactivation Design - places for social imagination and conversation in Lindängelund. There are two main purposes of this thesis the first being to bring forth a study of interactivity implemented in the subject of landscape architecture. The second purpose of this thesis is to present a proposal to design a confluent landscape weaving together the upcoming botanical garden of Lindängelund and the residential area of Almvik, both situated in southern Malmö, Sweden, and also weaves people and their experiences together. This project may be described as investigative and experimentative reaserch by design.The first part of this project, Interactivation, is consisting of a theoretical report which discusses different ways of approaching when, how and why we interact in public space. Literature studies in for example space, placemaking, social life, people, participation and Japanese emptiness concepts has been undertaken to gain knowledge in the aim to create interactive landscape design.The second part, Context and Design Proposal, introduces the project context area of Southern Fosie in Malmö which consists of different kinds of residential areas, people of different nationalities and a large building site for a botanical garden and recreational area.

The higher status homestead called Kullen is located on top of a small hill just outside of Hova in V?stra G?taland. The house stands on a plateau surrounded by a stonewall. Aerial photos from the 1960?s shows what looks like a big parklike garden behind the house, with a gravel walk cutting through on the length of the garden up to the house.

In this work a new design for S:t Erik?s square in Uppsala is being proposed. The square is situated in the middle of the city, surrounded by historical buildings. Today the square is a parking lot. The aim of the design proposal is to promote life and activity of pedestrians and cyclists.

In today?s hectic society more and more people experience stress and our lifestyle gives us a very limited chance to recover. For some it sometimes goes that far that they get burnt-out, they have pushed themselves to the ultimate limit. There are different methods and treatments to recover but one very efficient treatment is to spend time in a rehabilitation garden. There the patients get treated by therapeutics that uses the garden as the main tool.The fact that gardens and parks have a positive effect on humans have been used by people for a long time but it?s not until recently that the research has taken speed.

The population growth in Europe and with that in Sweden was enormous under 18th century. The results became housing shortage in large part of Europe. Tight residency/ inhabited, poverty and emigration were series of social questions in Sweden. Private house (egnahem) as in the beginning was an idea from England and Germany became a political measure and the answer at those miserable social circumstances in Sweden. The purpose with the private house (egnahem) was to help those new people moved in to towns with place to live and counteract movers to towns and emigration. With the governmental loan and land availability that some municipalities and wealthy people contributed with, could people get a place to live with the small garden. The city garden (trädgårdstaden) with their future idealistic idea/utopia, English gardens, ideas with roots in the old-fashioned gardens (allmogeträdgårdar) and lots of books and periodicals were the source of inspirations. From these the private house gardens (egnahemsträdgårdar) were born. Object for my study is my and my family?s own house in Limhamn, south west of Malmö which was built in 1912 under private house gardens era. The garden and the building have still trace and element from the time of private house. My suggestion is inspired by the private home style with a new thinking design that answers to daily need and the busy life style; a rather easy to maintain for green environment. A more relaxing and peaceful garden with simple design, a garden despite that it is surrounded by neighbours and streets invites in harmony and dreams..

Water connects heaven and earth. Water is the most obvious element of nature. To move in water is for me more than cooling of on a hot summer?s day. It is about freedom and the feeling of being above the state of things.

Invasive alien plant species have historically caused major damage to ecosystems and are considered to be amongst the greatest threats to biodiversity globally. The lurking threat of harm to well functioning ecosystems has led to the development of global and regional goals and regulations which seek to stop the spread of invasive species. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a list of species that are specifically harmful to the Swedish flora and fauna, which includes (amongst others) garden lupin. The management of invasive species is however largely dependent on local actions, making municipal public servants key players. This qualitative study uses interviews to investigate how municipal public servants who are responsible for managing invasive alien species view this work.

This study aims to explore how a gardening project with elderly living in Djuröhemmet, a nursing home outside Stockholm, affected them regarding psychological well-being and their experience of participation during the planning and construction of the memory garden. The gardening project is new in its kind by allowing the residents to influence the design of the garden by sharing the project leader their gardening memories from previous parts of their life and by wishing for specific plants and items.  The method being used was qualitative interviews where we interviewed seven people living in Djuröhemmet who participated in all or parts of the project. The theoretical framework is Molins (2004) definition of participation, but also theories of meaningfulness, social needs and gerotranscendence were applied. The results indicate that the participants did not realize that their involvement during the planning helped developed the garden.

An era ended in 1920 when the Walloon ironworks village of Strömsberg closed. The Wallon people had lived on the spot for 300 years and influenced the region was a lot. The kitchengarden in Stromsberg was a gardencenter 1920-50. The count´s good profits made him reinvest a lot of capital in the Wallon ironworks village to make it better and to construct forges, buildings and gardens. The kitchen garden´s history in Stromsberg started in 1660-70s, when Johan Vervier, built Strömsbergs first manor house.

The purpose of this master thesis is to attract attention to the undefined spaces of our urban landscape and emphasize the need of these spaces in the city. The different values of these spaces are here clearly presented so that they can be considered when real estate developers show a particular interest in any one of these undefined spaces. The term undefinied spaces can mean a lot of things. The spaces that I now choose to define as undefined spaces are neither planned nor designed. It could for instance be a piece of leftover land in between two residential areas, or as times change, a formerly planned area might be forgotten and left to its own.